Iceland's Hydrogen Commitment

There was a very cool piece on Hydrogen as a fuel source that I heard on KUSU FM Wednesday. It’s called “The Hydrogen Horizon: Part I” by Cynthia Graber and I’ve included some paraphrased excerpts from it below. It’s an interesting listen if you want to go to the site and download the MP3:

Hydrogen is the most abundant element in the universe. Iceland President Grimsson. And his country has pledged to wean itself off imported oil and switch to hydrogen fuel to run its cars, trucks, buses and vast fishing fleet. It’s an ambitious undertaking that could save Iceland millions of dollars a year and cut its greenhouse gas emissions nearly two-thirds. President Grimsson is proud of Iceland becoming the testing ground, a kind of laboratory for the hydrogen future.

At the world’s only hydrogen filling station open to the public in Iceland there’s a large electrolyzer to split water into hydrogen and oxygen, a compressor, and a row of bright blue storage tanks. It runs entirely off clean, renewable energy. And it’s self-serve.

Right now there are no hydrogen cars made anyone in Iceland; just three city buses. It’s the first stage of a five-stage operation. First, trial buses then, trial cars. The plan is to eventually replace all gasoline and diesel vehicles with hydrogen models. However, Even the optimists here say it will take about fifty years to implement, in part because of the looming problem of how to store sufficient amounts of hydrogen to refuel hundreds of cars on a daily basis.

Another huge problem is cost. The vehicles are four times more expensive than the normal vehicle. The filling station is much more expensive than a normal gasoline station. And the fuel is much more expensive than diesel fuel today.